food clubs

a few months ago while doing my morning round of blog reading: into the gloss, peanut butter fingers, the nerd machine, you get the idea, i came across an interesting piece on a food delivery service called blue apron. julie at pbfingers.com had gotten blue apron as a christmas gift and was posting some seriously delicious pics.

as luck would have it that day blue apron was a gilt city deal for los angeles that week, dinner for 2 at half the price. i'm just one so, more food for me! i bought one straight away. after signing in to my blue apron account another deal came up for a wine club they were partnering with, club w. food and wine, gilt.com, you have my heart.

drinks!

"boxed" wine worth drinking

club w is pretty genius, imho. you take a brief pallet quiz: do you like red or white, spicy food, how sweet, etc and club w cranks out 12 or so bottles you may like, you select 3 to try each month. there are 2 cost levels of wine to choose from, $13 for featured and $14+ for curators choice, pretty fair and not too cheap for your everyday selection, as well as choosing to receive either 3 or 6 bottles in your shipment. so for $39 + $6 shipping you get 3 bottles of wine per month, free shipping on 6 bottles.

snuggly held in place

the first month i received 2 whites and a red. i prefer red but signed up late in the month so the other reds i picked were sold out, this has only happened once. my second shipment was all reds, huzzah! while club w is a monthly service, you can skip months any time. you receive an email with your choices for the month and either opt in or out. pretty easy, i'm loving it.

new wine rack

on to the food. unlike most meal delivery services i've come across, blue apron does not prepare the food for you, they simply ship you the ingredients and the recipe. it's like ikea, but for dinner, and with way less hair pulling out. this appealed to me mostly b/c my menu planning (b/c of course i plan my weekly meals, nerd) consists of basically the same ingredients to make a few different meals. most of which have been posted in this blog. i'm trying to grow here people!

i logged into blue apron to set up my delivery, sadly it would be 2 weeks rather than 1, poor planning on my part. i selected my delivery date and removed shellfish as an option, still dodgy on which i can tolerate and which i cannot. the default is to ship every week, you can skip or cancel anytime. the cost is only $9.99 per meal per person, but you must have a minimum of 2 people. this means leftovers for me, but also a higher price point when compared to my usual grocery bill. you can receive their recipes free via email and follow on pinterest, which is pretty sweet (free) deal.

via blueapron.com

i totally forgot to take a picture of the delivery. everything came in one box with plastic wrapped ice packs. i had it delivered to work so i was able to put everything in a fridge/freeze until i went home. i'll post the results in a few days.